TO COVENTRY AND BIRMINGHAM IOI

because they shrink from imitating the wealthier classes and
do not want their friends and neighbours to think they are
suddenly "trying to be posh." After all, there is more than
one kind of snobbery. We hear a lot about the man who
dresses for dinner in Central Africa; but that must not make
us forget the existence of a much larger number of men who
would die of shame if they were discovered by their acquaint-
ances conveying soup to their mouths above a stiff white
shirt. But whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that
whist is still the favourite card game of the mass of the
English people. The whist drive I attended, one of several
advertised in the evening paper, was not a private social
function, the equivalent of a bridge party, but a public
affair, a combined entertainment and gamble, run by some
astute person for profit. (And a very nice thing he must
make out of it, too.) It seemed from the advertisement to be
the largest and most swaggering. You paid two shillings to
compete, but there were money prizes amounting to twenty-
three pounds. I concluded, rightly as it turned out, that a
man who promises to part with so much prize-money must be
fairly certain of getting a great many patrons at two shillings
a head, The whist drive, one of a tri-weekly series, was held
in a certain public hall and began at eight-fifteen. So I
raced through my dinner and hurried on to it.

The hall was large, austere in colouring and decoration,
and lighted in the most uncompromising fashion by un-
shaded bulbs of high voltage. It had about as much intimate
charm as the average big railway station* I guessed at once
that we were in for a formidably business-like evening.
Suspended from the ceiling, about a third of the way down,
the room, was a large indicator, showing the four suits.
The remaining two-thirds of the hall, beyond this indicator,
were filled with very small chairs ranged round very small
tables, most of them not proper card tables but mysterious